Twitter ‘Shadow Banning’ Prominent Republicans

Twitter ‘Shadow Banning’ Prominent Republicans

RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel at the Republican National Committee’s winter meeting at the Washington Hilton in Washington, February 1, 2018. (Yuri Gripas/Reuters)

Algorithms employed by Twitter to limit the reach of hateful content are preventing the accounts of prominent Republicans, such as RNC chair Ronna Romney McDaniel, from appearing in search results.

The phenomenon known as “shadow banning” has affected several conservative Republican lawmakers, including Representatives Mark Meadows, Jim Jordan, and Matt Gaetz, as well as Donald Trump Jr.’s spokesman Andrew Surabian. It has not extended to their counterparts on the left, whose accounts continue to auto-populate in Twitter search results.

When contacted for comment, a Twitter spokesman told Vice that the shadow bans were the result of algorithms that analyze “account behavior” in order to reduce the visibility of accounts that routinely spew hateful and bigoted content.

The stated goal of the shadow-banning algorithms, according to a May 15 blog post, is to elevate the visibility of accounts that are “contributing to the healthy conversation” in searches and conversation.

“We are aware that some accounts are not automatically populating in our search box and shipping a change to address this,” the spokesman told Vice.

During two Capitol Hill hearings conducted in recent months, Republican lawmakers have argued that the content-filtering systems employed by Facebook and Twitter to elevate the discourse on their platforms have disproportionately silenced conservative voices.

A spokesman for Representative Gaetz suggested the shadow ban may be related to the lawmakers’ aggressive questioning of Twitter executives in a hearing last week. During the hearing, Gaetz argued that platforms like Twitter, which claim to be “neutral publishers” under federal law, should not privilege certain forms of content over others.

“It is curious that these allegations would arise the week following Congressman Gaetz’s heated exchange with Twitter senior executives before the House Judiciary Committee,” the spokesman for Gaetz told Vice.

McDaniel, whose counterpart, DNC chair Tom Perez, has not been affected by shadow banning, demanded an explanation in a statement provided to Vice.

Recommended Articles

Most Popular

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is Jonah Goldberg’s weekly “news”letter, the G-File. Subscribe here to get the G-File delivered to your inbox on Fridays.
Dear Reader,
“Save Ike from the Kikes.”
I’d better explain.
This weekend marks the one-year anniversary of the Nazi troll armies’ march ...
Read More

Studies will someday be done on the deleterious effect Donald Trump has had on the brains of people who loathe him. It drives them to say things that are as palpably foolish as some of the president’s own doozies. This week’s winner: There is no such thing as a “perjury trap.”
Because some of the ...
Read More

Michelle Williams, an actress, has decided to become a spokesman on the issue of pay inequality in her profession, and appears this month on the cover of Vanity Fair with a headline to that effect.
This decision follows what she describes as a humiliating episode in which she learned in the pages of USA Today ...
Read More

Will Democrats pull an “October Surprise” this year and announce that the highly polarizing Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco won’t be their candidate for House speaker after all? Growing up in the Bay Area, I saw Pelosi’s iron will and stubbornness up close for decades. The possibility of her stepping back ...
Read More

A few weeks before I was ordained a Catholic priest in the late autumn of 1994, my superior in the seminary told me that, in his opinion, it was probably the most difficult time in a century to become a priest. Yet, he went on, it was also the most exciting time. I really did not take much notice of what he ...
Read More